Justice for Pamela
Throughout the Hulu series Pam & Tommy, Pamela Anderson spends a lot of time as the only woman among crowds of men. A tableful of male lawyers press her into a lawsuit that devastates her public image. More lawyers subject her to a brutally misogynistic deposition. Television affiliates gather around her like a magazine cover come to life. And of course, her Baywatch producers surround her on the beach, cutting any meaningful acting from her script and posing her as a literal object for the camera. “I can move myself,” Lily James’s Anderson uncomfortably reminds a crewman when he attempts to physically reposition her.
The series, which just aired a devastating sixth episode and concludes on March 8, shows audiences a version of Pamela Anderson many haven’t had the chance to see before. She’s not just a blonde bombshell finding her path as a sex symbol. Pam & Tommy’s Anderson is a self-possessed, ambitious woman whose instincts and intelligence should prevail over the boardrooms of men—if only so much of her existence weren’t about pleasing people.
There’s a painful irony then, that a show about Anderson’s victimhood came about against her wishes and from a largely male production team. (Pam & Tommy was initially announced in 2018 with James Franco directing and starring as Tommy Lee. He left the project after accusations from female students of his acting school.)
The show tells the backstory to the infamous sex tape of newlyweds Anderson and Lee. Stolen and sold on the web, it arguably marked both the first viral celebrity sex tape and the first revenge porn of the digital era. Set in the Wild West days of the early internet, Pam & Tommy chronicles how the tape opened up questions of celebrity and privacy that we still grapple with today.
Without Anderson’s approval though, does just repeat the exploitation it depicts? Recent works such as and also retell a chapter of ’90s tabloid scandal. The show’s eponymous tape entered the world at a moment that lacked a moral framework for the technology enabling its spread. Are we similarly at a moment where retelling personal histories—even those of celebrities—should be more sensitive to their subjects’ privacy?
